Cha Spending Choices: Safety Or Maintenance

In a public housing system that defines the word "dilapidated," perhaps this is the worst building: the concrete Chicago Housing Authority high-rise at 714 W. Division St.

The 713 code violations throughout this building represent the highest number for one building out of the estimated 21,000 violations throughout the CHA at any one time, according to the latest available figures.

"There's a lot of things that need to be done, and no one is doing anything about it," said Mary Brackenridge, 26, who lives in the building in the Cabrini-Green development.

Well, that's not entirely true, Brackenridge acknowledged. Workers recently replaced the plywood boards covering her windows with glass, she said. It only took about two years.

Brackenridge's building is extraordinary only for its number of code violations; similar living conditions, and worse, can be found throughout the CHA.

Last week, in the wake of a fatal fire June 1 in a Robert Taylor Homes apartment, federal and local housing officials seized on the number of code violations in CHA buildings to further push their arguments for demolishing authority high-rises.

But until CHA Chairman Vincent Lane and others can get replacement housing built and persuade tenants in many buildings to support demolition, the question remains: Is the CHA effectively spending the tens of millions of federal tax dollars it gets each year to maintain its deteriorating structures?

Critics contend that the CHA and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the authority's chief source of money, are engaging in de facto demolition of many developments through shoddy maintenance.

In addition, they point out that recently announced federal plans to improve security at CHA buildings will simply shift money from repairs to security measures such as the much-publicized BITE teams, which search common areas and vacant apartments for guns and drugs.

William Wilen, director of housing litigation at the Legal Assistance Foundation of Chicago, said, "On the one hand, they're worried about the violence. On the other hand, they're unwilling to commit any significant money to deal with the problem and provide for real modernization, real security."

HUD, Wilen said, is "just forcing the housing authorities to divert money that normally would be spent on repairs."

HUD officials, who have taken Lane's plans for restructuring public housing and incorporated them into legislation pending in Congress, are quick to defend the CHA for making difficult policy decisions.

Edwin Eisendrath, the secretary's representative for HUD's Midwest office, said, "Some people don't think (CHA officials are) spending enough on security. Others don't think they're spending enough on maintenance. The truth is it would cost a billion dollars to get all those buildings up to code. It's cheaper to replace them."

For their part, CHA officials say many residents support spending money on security over repairs. Improving maintenance is a priority, said CHA spokesman Steve Canty, but "you can't do it if you've got bullets from gang members and drug dealers flying overhead."

CHA officials say the federal money they get to modernize their buildings-an estimated $150 million in fiscal year 1994 alone-is only a fraction of what they need. Moreover, they point out that they are stuck with decades-old buildings replete with design flaws, including exposed elevators.

"Show me buildings anywhere in this city, anywhere in the county, where the elevators were built on the outside like 60 percent of our family buildings. It's insanity," said Robert Whitfield, the CHA's chief operating officer.

A CHA report to HUD earlier this year bluntly explained that the authority "unfortunately is unable to do regular annual inspections and instead has to spend all of its financial and staff resources to do emergency inspections and repairs."

Whitfield said many CHA buildings are at a crossroads.

"They've reached a point where we've patched and patched for 10 or 15 years," he said. "You can't patch anymore. In the next five years, these buildings are just going to give out."

So the CHA, federal and city officials have joined the same chorus, saying the high cost of maintaining the buildings is just one more reason to tear them down and start over with scattered, low-rise developments that mix people of different incomes.

But some CHA residents are skeptical of such plans.

The Legal Assistance Foundation filed a federal lawsuit against CHA and HUD in May 1991 on behalf of residents at the Henry Horner Homes development on the West Side. Like similar suits in a half-dozen other American cities, it alleged that failure to maintain the property and to reduce high vacancy rates (49.3 percent at Horner at last count) constituted the "de facto demolition of the buildings," Wilen said.